


plum, peony

by chuchisushi



Series: bind up your brittle battalion; we march again to war [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Character Study, Gen, Survivor Guilt, Team as Family, mid-foreground baze/chirrut, no betas we die like men, unearthing this fic from the depths of writer's block
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 10:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11850042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi
Summary: He walks the halls like a ghost sometimes, something small and restless.Or: Bodhi Rook, after Scarif.





	plum, peony

Bodhi sleeps in fits and starts after Scarif.

It is not so unusual amongst the Rebellion, to have shallow slumber or to be unable to sleep at all; Bodhi, on some level, envies the ease with which Chirrut can doze off anywhere, even as he knows the skill is born of a soldier’s grace underneath constant pressure. NiJedha had been a hothouse when he’d returned, bearing Galen’s message. He can scarcely imagine having lived there for the decades before, of learning to survive under Imperial occupation.

The Empire changed him, left its marks. More than just in the mild paranoia that gnaws at the edges of his awareness (he knows he is not alone in this either); more than just in the days that he nearly _aches_ for the strongest stims, for that bright edge that made everything stand out clear and sharp; more than just in the hours he spends wandering the halls to the hangars, doing whatever busy work he can to take his mind off of the haunting thoughts of what he had _done_ in his years of flight under the Empire’s banner.

He finds himself unlearning habits; he finds himself figuring out how to categorize himself beyond the bare bones of numbers and abilities. The Empire had no use for workers that couldn’t work. Bodhi remembers the test scores that had placed him in a life of solo, set routines and little support for when supply runs went bad, that had spared him the tight confines and martyr’s glory of a TIE fighter’s cockpit.

The Alliance does not ask him to stay or to serve it. The Alliance thanks him for what he has done for them. Thanks him for the sacrifice he made of himself, for the wounds he sustained that now mark his skin palomino keloid, that make his mind blank and his hands quake. They give him a medal. They offer to cut him loose. 

Bodhi watches Jyn collapse in on herself in the too-quiet nights after they wake in the medward, like the remnants of a sun gone nova. _Stardust_ , Galen had called her, and Bodhi speaks into the veil of darkness and silence that they, Rogue One, share in their recovery, telling them about a man who had died alongside so many others on a rainy flight deck on Eadu. He knows it must hurt her even as it comforts, to hear about these hours spent with a person like a stranger to her, beloved but lost; but Jyn never speaks of it, just lies on Bodhi’s other side, Cassian bracketing her opposite, on the nights that Bodhi can barely hold on to what was left to him by the Empire, by Saw, by Scarif, both their arms weighing him down so he won’t drift away.

Bodhi chooses to stay. He watches Baze and Chirrut pressed too-close together, desperate in their survival and with their disbelief for having done so. How are they alive when Jedha is not? How have they been granted this boon: one ragged remnant of the Guardians, one who had burnt up his faith, and one who had held the controls of an Empire ship in his once-steady hands, thoughtlessly, on their course?

They are not the only ones. Bodhi is not the only traitor amongst the Rebellion who had once worn the emblem of the Empire on their shoulders. They are not, even, the only ones of Jedha in the Alliance. All of them are united in their grief in this: how have they survived when so many others had not?

Jedha’s common tongue turns each other’s heads in the mess and the halls and the hangars. Those who remain find each other, in those days after Rogue One is released from the medward. Some cry. Some laugh. Some just sit with them, bring them gifts of fruit and cloth, and both Baze and Chirrut hold Bodhi down to keep him from drifting away, anchor him with a heavy hand on his shoulder or his fingers tucked firmly into the crook of an arm. They weigh him down. Keep him here. Jedha’s native words slip easily from their tongues, and some of Jedha even speak with Baze or Chirrut in even more regional languages, and it has been so long since Bodhi has talked that his words _creak_ , but he speaks as well. The Rebellion feeds him sweet fruit just barely bruised, stone fruit that drips fragrant juices, and Bodhi hides his face in Baze’s or Chirrut’s or Cassian’s or Jyn’s shoulders when the world becomes too much, and it works. He perseveres.

And Bodhi sleeps in fits and starts, after Scarif, after their rebellious flight. It is much the same for the others, as much as they don’t admit otherwise, to be strong in the face of the eyes that are upon them. Some nights, he wanders into Jyn or Cassian’s room. Some nights, one or the other (or both) find him. Sometimes they sit, to keep him company. Sometimes they coax him back to bed.

Bodhi sleeps in fits and starts and tries to settle back into his skin, but he doesn’t worry overmuch if it doesn’t lie upon his shoulders as well as it once had. He does what he can. He tells Mission Control what he remembers of the Empire’s movements, what he’d seen and done underneath their banner, and it takes longer than it should for how dragging the piecemeal recollections out of his skull leaves trembling threads of slime behind in their shift. Some days, it hurts. Some days, it hurts _well._ Like a wound healing.

It’s alright. It's alright. He has his team and their support.

Bodhi chooses to stay. So does Jyn. So do Baze and Chirrut. They all do what they can, around their injuries, around their scars.

And Bodhi sleeps in fits and starts, but it is alright. It’s alright.

He’s not alone.


End file.
